


The Footpath in Cévennes

by BrynCarys



Category: Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types, La Belle et la Bête | Beauty and the Beast (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Beauty and the Beast Fusion, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Beauty and the Beast Elements, Confessions, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Falling In Love, Fantasy, Feelings Realization, France (Country), French Kissing, Hurt/Comfort, Intense, Love, Love Confessions, Loving Marriage, Magic, Magical Realism, Marriage, Marriage Proposal, Married Couple, Married Life, Married Sex, Parallel Universes, Parallels, Post-Wedding, Realistic, Realization, Sex, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, So Married, True Love, Vaginal Sex, Wedding Night, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:41:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 22,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25604512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrynCarys/pseuds/BrynCarys
Summary: Five hundred years pass at the Beast's castle, with few changes. The magic is difficult to understand. And yet the power of love and attraction can go through barriers. Picks up after the Beast saves our heroine from a panther attack, but diverges quickly from familiar scenes from there. What would it be like to be a heartbroken woman, and to truly cross into a magical realm, to find love, desire, and a new life...would you believe it's real?Heads up: Implied desire / reference to attraction to Beast-like state. No actual animalistic sex, but definitely discussed.
Relationships: La Bête | The Beast (La Belle et la Bête) & Original Female Character(s), beast - Relationship
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

He lay in the bed, stripped bare against the bleeding marks slashed and ragged across the deep brown hair across his back. 

He was a Beast. 

And yet he still seemed a man. An enigma.

A mystery.

He was wounded. He was angry. And even though he was a beast, he had saved her from the wild animals of the forest, when she so stupidly had lingered past sundown to pick the frost plums. 

And so, in turn, she would save him. 

The wounds oozed, and he roared as she tentatively touched. She’d expected the shout, the rage, but it still made her jump. Around her, the sighing and weaving of breeze meant the servants were swaying with nervousness. Her hands shook too, as she tried to think what would help. 

“I…I only know what would work on my own skin,” she confessed. “And I am afraid that the salve I know would be using your precious roses you tend so carefully. A lot of them.”

“You may not touch them!” he growled. “Especially not for the likes of me!”

She wondered if he would heal differently. If he would not catch fever or infection. Without the medication of her world and her time, she could only fall on her limited knowledge of herbs, which was meager at best and he denied her that. 

“Then I don’t know what to do,” she said. “And I don’t—”

“Leave me!”

Whispers rose behind her. The servants always listened to their master. They left her alone with him, and she could always follow.

But he wasn’t her master, for all that she was tied to the magicked castle. Castle. Even the word clattering inside her head sounded ludicrous. Who still lived in a castle unless they were tethered to some phenomenon?

“No. I will not leave,” she said.

He didn’t answer this time, just turned on his side away from her, giving her a pure view of his injuries. 

“I want to—”

“Because you feel indebted to me?” he growled. “That is not wanting to do anything but relieve your own conscience.”

“Well, you must allow me that,” she determined, her voice firmer than she felt. “You were allowed to rescue me from the two cougars, was that not a relief from your own conscience for binding me to your castle?”

She wanted to say more, but it was stuck.

The magic here stifled her at times with tantalizing but unspoken rules. She knew she was on the cusp of it some days, yet still it remained just as elusive as before even when she felt she could understand it. There was a current, pulling on the edges of her eyes. There was a story, she was sure. Something from her time. Some timeless tale, re-told across cultures and lands. 

Always about a beast. 

Or was it a maiden? A frog-princess? A swan?

Something about a castle…hidden? Enchanted? The palace East of the Sun and West of the Moon. Or was it…

She took in his painful gashes, wishing she had more than hot water and lye. The wide expanse of his back was covered in short, dark brown hair, same as what covered his whole body, but that did not cover the bigness of his muscles, or the curve of his shoulder and bicep as he rolled away. If he were a man, he would be overwhelmingly masculine. In fact, she was almost glad he wasn’t, for she’d likely feel inadequate and tongue-tied in his presence if he were.

She put the water and lye on the side of the table. Enough was enough. Glancing about, she realized they were truly alone, for the other servants had indeed fled on his command. After clambering off the bed, she went around to where he was staring at the wall, and knelt, hoping the pain in his back would keep him from moving away.

“Thank you for saving my life,” she said quietly, against his closed eyes and pinched face. With slow hesitation, she reached out and brushed the very top of his cheek. It was the first time she’d touched him so delicately, and she felt his body quiver, though his eyes remained screwed shut.

When she walked out, she nearly tripped over the half-substantial, ghostly waifs that passed as the household servants, barely there, mostly transparent but generally human enough that it helped her sanity.

“Why do you stay with him, if he’s so difficult?” she asked rhetorically, knowing full well there was no place for them but a magic castle.

“It’s…grief,” Rose said, the wisp of her form floating around in a breeze, surprising her with her candor. Rose. They all were named something of a rose. “We knew he grieved for his mother, and then for his father. He felt an injustice with their early deaths. And his grief made him bitter.”

“But grief cannot turn one into a beast-creature,” she reasoned, looking about in resignation. “I know, because I have grieved too.”

If Rose had solid hands, she likely would have patted her knee.

“Haven’t we all, dear? But his grief was…overpowering. Some do not do well with it. It is in the blood. Unknowable until it is too late to cure. And one day, a majick man came to visit. Or was it a Jinn?”

“It was most certainly not a Jinn,” Rosemary said.

“It might have been,” Rosalie shook her head.

Rose sighed. “I don’t recall. He wasn’t well received, anyway, as Master was angry already then, frozen and hard, forbidding all company…and the warlock was told to go on his way. He didn’t take too kindly to poor hospitality, to the shunning of a prince, and so condemned him to…”

“Does he even have a name?” she wondered.

“We don’t recall it, dearest,” Rose answered sadly. “It’s been five hundred years and we all only call him Master.”

Getting to her feet, she took a step toward her bedroom and paused. Worry tingled at the points of her fingertips. 

“Perhaps I should sit with him a bit and make sure he is well,” she hedged, and all the slippery forms took a step back, perhaps with surprise. Looking around her, she gave a small smile. “He ordered you out, yes, but I am not his servant. I’ll call if I need anything.”

“We will be ready.” One named Rosalie called softly as she closed the door.


	2. Chapter 2

She pulled a chair over to the side of the bed, nestling as best as she could into the bumpy and slippery upholstery. The Beast breathed deeply, heavily, and she knew he slept, even though he likely still ached with pain.

It was difficult to sit there and not nod off, so she stood and wandered around the bedroom, touching nothing, and wishing she could keep her hands busy making a salve she knew would work. There were books, some quite tattered, and she picked up a volume of Vonnegut that she knew well, surprised to find such a modern book in a vintage castle. 

But as she sat next to him with the book open on her lap, she found herself staring at him. In sleep, he was almost peaceful. She could see the man in his face, in the slant of his eyes and the curl of his mouth. And the rest of him – covered in short, sleek fur, yes…but muscular beyond reckoning. The curl of his arm muscles, the swell of his chest, the width of his collarbone. Her breath caught suddenly, and she looked away, glad he couldn’t see her flush. 

Had it only been yesterday when they’d sat at dinner and he had asked her to marry him? 

She’d said she didn’t know, that it was too much to ask. Because she still had so many questions. And because she had promised herself never to love again. To shield herself from the chance to be hurt once more. And though she didn’t think the Beast would ever hurt her, she couldn’t trust him thoroughly. It mattered little that she was compelled to him, that her body responded to his. 

How could she believe he would not cause her heart to crack?

Just thinking of it all made her chest crash. Recalling her loneliness and the desolation and crippling sorrow made her breath come short again and this time it caught with pain. She must not think of this! She was safe here. The Beast had promised that at least, and she clung to it. In truth, now, she preferred his castle and his company to any others she knew in her own world and time, as fuzzy as it was in her memory now. 

She was safe, here, at least, from her heart being torn, as long as she took care with it and was not rash or hopeful. 

Slipping into uncomfortable sleep, she did not know how long she slumbered, only that when she woke, it was dark outside. Had a whole day passed? Was it only an hour later?

The noise came again. It was the Beast, and he made a low rumble that sounded a cross between a moan and a cry. He did not redden as a man would, but she clambered off her chair and went to him at once. Perhaps…she reached out and tentatively touched his forehead.

At her touch, he gasped aloud, a deep, rasping choke, and his eyes flew open. His massive hand grabbed her wrist, almost snapping it.

“You’re burning up,” she said at once, and he released her immediately, finding focus on her face.

“Is that what this is?” he asked, pain lacing his voice.

“I must see your wounds. An animal bite can become infected.” She went around before he could protest, and she nudged him gently. When he shifted so she could pull off the sheet, she could not hold in her own gasp.

“What is it?” he barked gruffly.

“It’s…you must let me tend to this. You must. It’s…” Words failed her for a moment as she saw the deep red bubbling along each slash, and the white pus that had started to eat it. It would not be long before his blood poisoned. “You’re letting me wash these with soap and water, and then I’m using your damn roses to make a salve that will heal it. No arguments. There’s no point in you dying over this.”

“You think I care if I die?” he scoffed weakly, but she noticed he did not protest further.

Without answering, she went to the door, finding the small one called Rosie waiting. Giving her directions and a list, she went back to find the Beast watching her from his gloomy huddle on the bed. He captured her every move, and fevered as he was, he still had some of his wit.

“You’re still wearing the dress from the other day.”

“I haven’t left you,” she declared, and was pleased to see his eyes widen at her admittance. “And good thing too, or it might have been longer before anyone discovered your wounds festering.”

He humphed, and looked away, then back at her, squinting through the haze of the pain. “Come closer.”

She did and he held out a hand, still steady and huge, and she put her own in it without thinking. He pulled her near and then stared down at her fingers.

“You’re hurt yourself.”

Frowning, she looked down at her palms, and was surprised to realize he was right. She had forgotten. “So I am.” She’d ripped her flesh on the briars of the plum bushes, and then again when she’d grabbed a branch to help him fend off the panthers.

“No one tended to you?” he growled, and she felt his ire rise at once.

“I…we have all been more worried about your injuries. Mine are small and insignificant and will heal.”

He shook his great head, but the action was too much, and he tried to fall back with a groan, stopping himself only a fraction before he let his back touch the sheets.

“Mademoiselle?” Rosie hemmed from the door, and she went to meet the trays and dishes that paraded in under her direction.

Taking the bundle of roses, she smashed the heads into a mortar and took up the pestle, hoping there would be enough, that her injured hands would not fail her. In the quiet, she heard him shift slightly. When she glanced to the bed, she saw him watching her, half-sitting and wincing. It was a good sign that he was not so dizzy he could not sit up, but it put his entire magnificent torso on display and that was dazzling enough. Shaking her head, she focused on the salve.

“How do you know how to do this?” he asked her after a while.

“I was always good at learning,” she smiled into the mortar. “For all the good it did me.”

“How is learning not a good thing?” he wondered.

She pressed her lips together, holding her story in, and shrugged. “Many people – many men – do not like a very smart woman. It can…intimidate. Well. It can be considered unattractive.”  
“Is that so? Is that what the world has become?”

“Has it changed so much from your own time?” she shot back. “I know my history, and what it was like five hundred years ago…wherever I am from. Women then had little say as well. Or at least, women were not supposed to be learned – they were supposed to be easy and subdued.”

He sighed. “You are not an easy woman.”

His words struck a nerve, perhaps because she’d been remembering her past when she sat vigil over his bed. Her hands stilled for a moment, and the deep, tearing sob that sometimes threatened her reserve bubbled forward, collapsing her throat. Bowing her head over the salve, she willed herself to press back the sorrow and ignore what he said. 

But her silence was too much, and he dove into it, clumsy. “I am sorry.”

She shook her head. “Don’t be. You’re quite right. I’m not an easy woman. I know it well.”

He was displeased, but didn’t seem to know the next words, and she could not help him. 

Instead, she continued to add roses, squeezing out their sacred juice, melting their velvet petals into her hands and staining her fingers so that her cuts were hardly visible.

It took hours for her to have enough rose oil, and then she had to combine it with another so that it would spread. By the time she was ready to apply it, nearly half the day had passed and still they were silent.

“Roll over, please,” she whispered, and he winced in pain as he did, exposing the full expanse of his back to her. She stared at the cuts, which were now washed in lye amid his protesting roars. Delicately, carefully, softly, she dabbed on the rose ointment, the smell of the roses wafting over them immediately. She could tell when it started to have effect by the rippling relaxation that started to melt into his body. Eventually, she heard him sigh with relief.

“Is that better?” she asked quietly, and was rewarded with the barest of nods.

Once she had a first coat rubbed into the wounds, she started a second. Partially to be sure she had done a good job and another reason, deeply buried, too embarrassing to recognize except in the quiet dark of her own room.

“Who have you left behind?”

The question surprised her. “Pardon?”

He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes cutting into hers. “Who have you left that might miss you? For all that you say you’re a difficult woman, surely you have some who mourn you?”

She concentrated on a particularly tender part of his back before answering lowly. “My mother is gone. My father drowns himself in drink. My sisters have been out of the house for years and do not care what I do with my life as long as it does not disrupt theirs. And my brothers…well…they might miss me, but they are old fashioned, and they often do not approve of my choices. Besides, they have married women who do not…who don’t like me. And a man must choose his wife over his sister. It is a loss I expected when I learned of their marriages.”

He seemed surprised. “The women don’t like you?”

“I’m not an easy woman,” she reminded. “And where I was…I was…I had power. And my success and happiness bred insecurity and envy. It is not so surprising. In fact, it was my own ability, my own ambition that…”

She stopped, feeling her heart slash open once more, and choked down the rest of her story. Clambering off the bed, she capped the salve, and finished speaking with her back to him.

“I’ll get a tea for your fever. We’ll know more tomorrow if it works…I hope it works.”


	3. Chapter 3

Rosie came in with her later, and they found him sitting in bed, already looking well, and with a shirt over his massive chest. She sighed. She’d have to reapply some of the ointment that would surely come off onto the fabric. Still, they were served dinner, and Rosie graciously left them alone again, as if realizing comfort was given behind their closed door. 

“What of you?” she asked him, blowing on the tea. “Have you left anyone?”

His long mouth went down, and he sunk into the bedding. “I have no one left. They’re all gone. And all dead.”

She felt a pang of pity and remorse for bringing it up. “I’m sorry – of course they are. I shouldn’t have asked. But…surely I’m not the only person to stumble on these gates in five hundred years. I am sure there have been other women.”

“Girls,” he nodded. “Perhaps one every hundred years.”

“Girls then,” she encouraged, giving him a small smile over the rim of the cup, noticing that he seemed to be himself more and more, that the tea and the rest and the ointment seemed to be helping. “Did not any of them wish to stay?”

He gave a rumble that passed for his laugh, bitter and sad. “No.”

“Did you ask any of them to marry you?” she pressed, needing to know. 

“I did.” He met her gaze squarely. The answer pained her more than she expected, though it only confirmed what she’d suspected. 

He did not love her. 

She was not special to him. 

He asked for marriage of any maid, perhaps, as a requirement of the magic that bound him to this place and form. It only reconfirmed what she believed to be true about herself: that she was unlovable, that something was wrong with her. 

That she should guard her heart. 

For if even a Beast did not love her, who could?

“I see,” she put quietly, and stood to take her tea to the window. Perhaps the night air against the cold of the winter on the grounds would cool her cheeks. Perhaps he would not see the shine of her eyes.

Then again, he did not know the worst of it. Didn’t the magick in all the stories ask for a maiden? She owed him that much of the truth.

“I must tell you,” she admitted suddenly, speaking out over the windowsill. “I am not a girl, and not a virgin. I’m a woman. I was married.”

She half-turned and saw the utter shock and surprise ringing across his wide face. Funny how she could read him now, the way she would anyone else. She knew her confession drew him up. He had not expected it at all.

“Widowed?” His voice sounded choked.

She shook her head again. “No.”

“Then he lives?”

“He does.”

The bedclothes rasped and she spun to see he stood, his shirttails hanging limply along his hips and the rags of his trousers trailing his ankles. How and when did he stop surprising her with his size? Why was she drawn to him now instead of repulsed?

“Then you should return to him.”

His determination, even in his weak state, was no laughing matter, but she laughed all the same, a hard, brittle sound. “Oh no I shouldn’t. He does not want me. Remember? I am not an easy woman.”

He took a step toward her and faltered. “He cast you aside? His own wife?”

She glanced at her left hand, where the ring once spun, a fine circle of silver. It had been her one constant, and when that was ripped away, she had never found her footing again. Not until this castle. Not until the Beast had shared his confidences. Until she had realized she was the mistress of the whole space, for all she was forbidden to go from the enchanted world she’d stumbled upon.

“In my time, a man or woman may leave their spouse whenever they like,” she explained. “The marriage is ended, completely and fully, as though it never happened.”

He seemed dumbfounded, but staggered a bit as he tried to come nearer. She spun on him. “Get back in bed before you undo all my work to heal you. I’ll get rid of the tea for now.”

She pulled the covers over him, and then left without another word, unable to manage the pity he would bear toward her, and unwilling to hear any claims he’d feel required to make: that she was beautiful, that her man should never have left her. 

He would be wrong to say such things.


	4. Chapter 4

When she came back much later, he was asleep again, the deep bellow of his chest rumbling against his throat. Curling back up in her chair, she propped her hand on her cheek and willed herself to get some sleep. 

But sleep was fitful and unkind, and she dreamed again of the pain of her husband’s betrayal, and lived the wrench of starting her lonely life again, and then found herself staring into the gleaming yellow eyes of the panthers in the woods, the yowl of the wild cats, and their startling teeth and menacing glower.

“Eilwen.” A massive hand gripped her forearm, shaking her. “Eilwen!”

She woke with a cry, and then realized her face was wet with real tears – from fear or sorrow she wasn’t sure, as the dream was muddled and uncertain.

“You were…” The Beast gestured wordlessly at her face as he released her. “You’ve been keeping vigil long enough. Go to your room and get some sleep.”

He did seem to be less fevered, and as she instinctively reached across the short distance to brush his brow, she knew he was healing well. The thought made her sad. What use would he have for her when he was better?

He sat up as she picked herself out of the chair. “You’re trembling. Was it a nightmare?”

She nodded, and began to gather the book and her shoes. The notion of sleeping apart from him suddenly seemed the deepest wrench of all. 

“Will you be alright?” His concern seemed genuine.

She turned to him, her eyes still holding in the drips of tears. “I hope…I am sure I’ll survive. I just…” She paused, and then twisted her fingers into fresh skirts. “I’d rather not sleep in my room.”

He stared at her. “Is it not to your liking?”

“It’s not that. It’s lovely. I just…I’d rather be here with you.”

“You don’t need to stay in that chair another night,” he frowned. 

“Might you…” She tried to calm the tremors that wracked her shoulders. No use. “But…of course. Of course. I am being foolish and expecting too much. Of course. Good night.”

She tore out of the room, hoping he did not catch that she began to sob as she moved down the corridor, hoping she caught up the torrent of sorrow before it echoed across the halls.

How could she have almost asked such a favor? How could she have even hoped for the comfort of those broad and bundled arms? 

She was a fool. 

Because of course, the Beast did not love her.

Her room was always easy to find, always just around a hall bend when she least expected it. The magic of the palace offered her some small ease in those ways, and she looked up at the door, wishing she had been brave enough to ask, to beg, wishing she had not dreamed such a vivid vision.

As she reached for the handle, the bulk of the Beast slammed into the door so she could not open it. He breathed heavily and unevenly, and she stared up at him, admonishment ripe on her mouth until she realized what he was doing.

He’d come after her.

“I did not understand, not at first,” he wheezed, leaning against the wood of the wall. “How could I? What girl…woman…would possibly wish for, let alone suggest…” Words failed him completely, and she suddenly worried that he might faint right there, where she could not get him back to his room. 

“Come in, please,” she begged. “Before you topple over. You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

He stared at her. “You want me to come into your room?”

“Unless you can get to your own bed in about five steps, then yes. I don’t know how long you’ll last,” she told him truthfully. 

He glanced about, uncertain perhaps of the magic’s strength or what was considered proper. Without another protest, he silently pulled open the door and followed her mutely into the soft creams, golds and pinks of her quarters.

“Sit down on the bedding,” she instructed.

He did, gingerly, the great bulk of him making the mattresses sigh and sag a little more than usual. He looked tired and uncomfortable, and she felt her nerves twitch.

“You’re still trembling, Eilwen,” he said heavily. “I was worried for you. You’d had a nightmare and I sent you away. I should have offered you more comfort.”

“You are very kind,” she told him. “But what I needed…wanted…I should not have even hoped for. It is forward of me to even ask.”

“But you didn’t ask. Here you know the rules. Ask anything of me and you shall have it.”

She shook her head. “In this, I will not ask. I should like it to come from you.”

He chortled. “What I would offer would repulse you.”

They stared at one another, and she wondered if this was yet another thing where the magic restricted his tongue. 

Finally, she hugged her arms around her middle, and looked at his feet. “I would ask you to hold me,” she whispered. “Take me into your arms so I might sleep feeling…protected.”

She could tell she’d surprised him yet again with her request, and it pained her for she wondered if by asking it, she forced him to do something he did not wish to do. 

“So it is what I suspected,” he murmured, more to himself. “I would never have believed it. That she would wish for it.”

“It was foolish to say,” she stammered into his pause. “Forgive me.”

His head jerked up and she met his wide eyes. “There is nothing to forgive. I would have offered you the same, except I never dreamed you’d prefer such a choice. I did not want to run the risk of you running out in disgust,” he finished ruefully. 

She felt shock trip through her blood. So he did indeed want to be next to her? Of his own accord? Something like hope simmered through her fiber, and she shook it off. There was no reason to hope for anything more than this small piece of comfort he was willing to give.

Behind her curtains, she pulled off her skirts and waistband, gliding a satin robe over the chemise she wore to bed, still marveling at how skirts had become the norm, that she could forget her modern clothing and pants. 

Would he think her ensemble too informal? Then again, he wore nothing but trousers and a thin cotton shirt. Surely she was considered buttoned up enough?

When she came out, only the candelabra by the bedside table was lit, and he was a massive dark shadow huddled on top of her bed.

“You truly wish this?” He still sounded disbelieving, and she slid into the sheets next to him even as he asked. 

“I do. Please,” she said. After the longest moment, she felt him wince and shift carefully and then thumped himself under the blankets. He lay stiff on his side, his body facing her, though he was still all shadow and grey darkness. The candelabra next to them went out by itself.

“Beast?” she asked into the quiet.

“Mm.” 

“Did you love the girls that came here? The ones who left?”

“I did not love them all – only two. And the loving I did do was painful beyond reckoning.” He said it plainly.

“So you know the pain of loss then?” she whispered. “The loss of love?”

She felt him nod, the hiss of his horn against the satin of the pillowcase. 

“I do too,” she finally confessed. “And in that, perhaps we are the same. For I have loved and lost too.”

“The man who cast you aside,” he rumbled.

“Him,” she agreed softly. “The one I loved.”

“Do you love him still?” There was heavy curiosity in the question.

She shrugged, feeling the sheet fall from her shoulder and exposing her neck to the cool air. At once he pulled the blanket back up, as if he could see in the dark. And perhaps he could. She had never asked.

“I love him only in the way one mourns the past,” she explained baldly. “The love has been replaced with sorrow and sadness. For he showed me truly how being a difficult woman is a curse in its own right.”

Moving to her back, so she could not even see the hulking shadow of the Beast, she finally spilled her secrets. Not in the modern way of her past, but in the more careful, mincing language that seemed forced on her here in the castle. It was the same story, just the same.

“You see, though I am not covered in the skin of a beast, I am shunned in my world. For my ambition, for the stigma of being a woman, for the disgrace of being cast aside. My husband and I… Our marriage was supposed to be a love match, and I loved him purely. But then, soon into our union, he stopped smiling at me. And he stopped eating at my table. And he stopped touching me. Our passionate nights ceased, and I thought perhaps he was ill. And then I wondered if somehow I had stopped enticing him, that my body repulsed him. And perhaps it was that. Or my ambition and my talent festered in him. I just…I did not expect him to find another woman.”

“He chose a different woman?” The rage in the Beast’s voice made her smile a little.

“You say it with indignity, but you have not been around a woman in a hundred years,” she reminded. “You forget that there are countless other women who are meek, who are exceedingly beautiful. I am neither. And you said yourself that I am not an easy woman.”

“But…” he spluttered, and then fell silent. Finally, he rejoined. “But I said it knowing that you were… mine.”

His ownership made her ache in all the forbidden places. Did he mean he had trapped her? That he wanted her? The circles wound uneven paths in her head, and they did not speak again.


	5. Chapter 5

In the morning she found herself curled into him, her forehead pressed into the curve of his throat, her knees drawn up into his belly and his arm draped heavily across her hip. She was no longer trembling.

His scent was wild and green, musky and manly all at once. It was overwhelming in the way only a woman understood, and she wondered if the others—the girls he’d loved—had been frightened of the richness of him, the sorrow in him. 

Had they not seen the virility of his body and his mind, and past the skin of his curse?

Would she have done so, had she come to this place before her own sadness?

She nestled closer, and his arm tightened about her, squeezing her into him briefly before he tore himself away. Frowning, she lifted up, the shoulder of her chemise dropping as her gown pinned under his bulk.

“Did you forget you slept in my bed?” she asked quietly.

She could not help but wonder if her warmth and her nearness revolted him too, in the way her previous husband had turned away from her, unable to be aroused and unable to enjoy her arms. The notion that the Beast might be unwilling to hold her cut her lungs and brought tension into her shoulders. 

Getting out from the covers, she tugged her clothes from under him. Like magic, the ointment had arrived in the morning tea cart sitting outside the room, and Rose waited by the sideboard, her eyes wide and wondering.

She shook her head at the silent questions. “It was nothing, only I did not wish to be alone and he was going to faint if he stood any longer. Nothing happened. He does not wish even to touch me.”

As she said so, she saw the woman’s watery, translucent eyes widen, and she continued, slashing her own self-worth as she did so, a familiar exercise that left no room for self-pity.

“And why should he? I am no beauty, and he loves the other girls. The innocent ones who left. I’m nothing like them. He does not wish to hold me. So you needn’t worry, Rose. I doubt my virtue will be much changed here.”

The servant continued to stare, and a heavy hand descended on her shoulder. She jumped and jerked to look up at him. How long had he stood and listened to her? Well, it was no matter, and all of it a truth. 

“Morning tea?” he asked, and the deep growling rumble of his voice made her close her eyes. Was it magic again, or was her body actually compelled to his, as if she was joined to him…drawn to him? Aching for him? Was it only because he was the only substantial being she saw?

“Yes. Tea.”

The dolly was brought in, and then they were left alone once more to munch on crusty tips of toast and sweet jams and hard-boiled eggs. 

As they ate, he glanced over at her tentatively, as if he was embarrassed.

“You think I did not enjoy our evening together?” he finally asked.

“Well,” she shrugged, rearranging her robe. “You did fly away from me the moment you woke. A woman might think from such a reaction that she was…repulsive.”

He started to bark a laugh, a deep roll that ended with him falling backwards into his chair. She watched, unable to join him, unable to see the joke. When he cleared his throat, he finally managed to squeeze out: “Repulsive?”

Pressing her mouth together, she stood and walked to the window, flinging it open against the sparkling white new snow. Was it such a jest? She closed her eyes and wished, once, and desperately, that she might be brave enough one day to believe that she might be worth something. That she might find joy again.

“You’ll catch a cold.”

He was behind her, moving as silent as a mouse, and she knew then that he was healing well. Knew that these cozy moments were coming to an end, and they’d go back to the strange, stilted dance of formality. But before she closed the wide tall windows, she felt his arm snake around her waist, and he pulled her against his chest, so that she could feel the curl of his hip in the curve of her back. 

“Repulsive?” he said harshly into her ear. “You think you are repulsive? Then what do you call me?”

She twisted in his arms and looked up at him in the brilliant fresh morning light, and touched the long straight line of his mouth, seeing the man just below the surface, wavering and fleeting.

“Handsome.”

His arms dropped at once, and she took the moment to close up the windows, hoping her blush fell away as she did the mundane task.


	6. Chapter 6

It was time to go back to the library, to spend her hours in the books and brittle pages covered with ink. It would be a small comfort compared to what she dreamed of these past days with him, but at least he was still with her in some ways in the castle. That would have to suffice, even if he did not care for her.

The library proved too much after several hours, and she went to the gardens instead. There were never any weeds for her to pull, never any dead blooms to pluck, so she always wandered aimlessly, wishing there was something she could do. Anything to keep her hands busy, and damn the fine clothes she was always given to wear. Likely the castle could clean anything readily. If something was magical enough that roses bloomed in snow, it could certainly do away with some mud stains on silk.

“Eilwen.”

She hadn’t realized he was there, a black, immovable marble statue.

“Beast.”

“Sit with me?” he asked tentatively, as if he was shy now that she’d been so bold. 

“Of course.” She sat, and held herself tightly, warily. 

They were quiet for a long time, and then he said softly, deeply, “Thank you again for healing me. I’m glad you did.”

“I am, too,” she said simply.

Silence filled her ears once more, and she wished she could give in and weep, though she didn’t know what she’d be weeping for. 

“Eilwen. Beauty,” he whispered, and she smiled a little, wondering how he had discovered the meaning of her name. “You are that. You must see it. You must believe it. How can you not?”

She scoffed at that, and the noise made him sit up straighter. 

“You disbelieve me?” He was affronted.

“Of course I do. The two…I have slept with two men in my life. One chose another woman. The other flew away from my touch. That doesn’t leave much room for encouragement.”

He was thunderstruck, and she didn’t realize why until he choked out, “You call me a man?”

It took her a moment to recognize that he was near tears, the weight of them blocking any further discussion, and she rose at once to go to him, to stand before him where he sat and to take her kerchief and press it into his palm. There did not seem to be any other words, so she left him there, weeping in the garden, and she felt strangely joyful, for she had told him a truth. 

She did see him as a man. A man who, like her, had been rejected by others. Unloved by others. They had such a thing in common, at the very least.


	7. Chapter 7

He didn’t join her for dinner, and the fact made her heart hurt. Perhaps he had gotten what he needed from her. Perhaps he did not need to sup with her any longer, to beg for her hand in marriage. Perhaps that was only required once by the magic, perhaps her obvious affection was not enough to compel him. She didn’t know if he paced in frustration and uncertainty. She only knew he was not with her.

She spent most of the evening trying to gather fragments from the past, to remember how the stories always went. Was he in correct form, or was it she who was to transform? Did the man burn the clothes of the woman, or did she kiss him to break a spell? It was all muddled, all gone, spirited away as splinters of tales even as she thought them, as if such memory was forbidden.

If she could only be with him, sit with him through the night, feel his body next to hers, maybe she would be less nervous about it all. He’d make it all feel as if she belonged and all would be well. He always did.

Perhaps that was lost. Perhaps she had been too forward with her thoughts, once again, and had ruined any hope for something more. But then again, she had been the one to leave him weeping in the garden. 

By the middle of the night, she knew she would not sleep until she was certain he was comforted. Padding through the hallway in bare feet and a white flannel chemise, she knew she didn’t look the part of the innocent princess. 

But she wasn’t. She had been married. She knew about the world, about a wedding bed, about the mundane of living a life with another. She knew all this, and yet was drawn to this strange person who had somehow tied himself with her. She ached for his words, for his nearness, in a way that could only be explained as necessity.

His room was dim, and the door unlocked. She couldn’t hear the familiar sigh of his big lungs, but she saw the rounded lump of him in his bed, turned on his side away from the healing back wounds.

Would he be angered at her forwardness? There was no way to know. She went up to him, and knelt by the bedside, and his eyes opened, steady and straight. 

“Might I…would you…?”

He said nothing, only pulled himself backwards and opened the covers, inviting her in without taking his eyes from hers. 

She slid in with a sigh, feeling as though she was stealing something that wasn’t hers. She was asking for something when he did not give it to her. And perhaps didn’t want it. Expecting him to pull away further, she held her breath, waiting for the separation and the coldness of the sheets. 

Instead, she felt his arm wrap around her hip and stomach, hooking her closer and against his body. Her back fit into the cave of his chest, and her bottom sat between the bones of his hips. It was far more delightful than she had expected, and she closed her eyes against the warmth and the sensations.

“You are not repulsive, Eilwen,” he whispered, as the last of the candles snuffed and they were covered in darkness. “Far from it. This morning I ripped away because…I only worried…I could not…well. You called me a man. And a man…”

He stopped short, and at once she understood. Hot heat soared into her blood and pooled in her womb. The notion was a delight, a naughty secret caught between the two of them. She wanted to giggle.

“So that was it,” she whispered back. “Why didn’t you say so? I have been married. I understand.”

He scoffed. “But I am…”

“What?”

He paused again, and then said oddly, “I am a Beast.”

She tried to breathe through her nerves, wondering if she should pose the question her mind begged, that her history and her past would have demanded she ask. As he continued to hold her, and drowsiness piled onto them both, she finally found the words.

“Are you like a man…there?”

His whole body reacted, reflexively jerking toward her and then straightening away. She clutched his arm to her belly, willing him to stay near, to talk. She needed to know.

“Are all the women of your time so brazen?” he wondered hoarsely.

“Some more than others,” she admitted. “But I think it a fair question, given you asked me to marry you last week. A woman should know her marriage bed.”

His arm became iron. “What are you saying?”

“I am only asking a logistical question,” she said mildly, ignoring the tremors of anticipation running through him, reminding herself that he did not love her, that he might only need marriage to break a spell. That once he released himself from it all, he would cast her aside as well. That he would have a thousand beautiful women if he were a man in truth. That she did not want to love, for she could not bear the pain of it.

He was quiet for so long she thought he had decided not to answer her raw question about anatomy. Then, slowly, rusty and gruff, he answered. 

“I am as a man, though perhaps…larger.”

His voice was thick with embarrassment, but he did not move away from her, and with the admittance, they both drifted to sleep, though her dreams were rosy and warm.


	8. Chapter 8

In the early morning glow, she woke. Neither had moved. Though he still slumbered, she finally felt the hardness of his arousal against her buttocks and back, and the realization of it was torture and happiness at once. Happiness, because she knew now that she roused him in some fashion. And torture because she knew it was only his body, and not his heart, that caused the response. 

She tried not to breathe so he would not stir and settled into the embrace, imagining she had agreed, and they were wed, that her life would be as it was, though with more, with him—with intimacy, with devotion, with affection and lovemaking. The visions filled her body until she felt she would puddle with imagined sensations in the grey of the morning light. And through it all, she knew she was a fool for entertaining the dreams.

When he woke, he griped her briefly before starting to pull off as he had before, and though she tightened her hold on his arm, it slipped from her stomach. He rolled away, hissing slightly with the pain of it as he pressed onto his back. She sat up, hugging her knees to her chest, and closing her eyes against the sorrow. 

Goodness! His rejection of her body was chokingly painful, deeply cutting. Perhaps she did care for him. Perhaps, if she let herself, she might love him. She already knew she craved his company above anyone she knew, but she also knew that loving him was dangerous, for it only led to refusals.

“Eilwen.” Her name was a rumble. “Look at me.” 

She did, her glance sliding over the sheets. She was unable to stop herself, and she saw the rise of his desire for all he tried to hide it. It was undeniably attractive, and she looked into his face. Everything there reminded her of their months together in the castle, exchanging favorite childhood stories, preferred foods, debating philosophy and morals. She looked at him knowing that she understood him and who he was. That she saw the man under the beast, that she could love him if she thought there was a chance of stealing his heart.

“I see you,” she said.

He was quiet for a moment longer. “Do not think I let you go of my own accord,” he told her.

“No? Does that magic pull you away?” The tart sarcasm in her voice was ill concealed, and his eyes darkened as he winced.

“No. I only…” he sighed, as if forcing himself to be as forward. “I do not wish to…frighten you.”

“How so?” She inched her way back to his side, spreading the length of her body along his hip and chest, curling her arm around his stomach, simply to see if he would stop her and push her off. Expecting it.

Instead, he settled deeper into the mattress. “You know what I mean. You said you were wed once before. Do you truly need an explanation?” he said, suddenly irritable, but innately she understood it was not at her but his own bashfulness. Was there a chance…a small, uncertain chance…that he desired her truthfully? That he was trying to shield her?

The idea took hold and she pressed her face into his shoulder, smelling him, and burying her forehead into the softness of the thick beard that served as something more on him. He sighed, but it was a sound of contentment, and his fingers stroked her hair, her spine, and finally, carefully, the curve of her buttock. When he did, he pulled back his palm fast, burned, uncertain.

But she pushed up, forcing him to meet her gaze, and brought his hand back to her bottom. “I do not mind your touch. I…want…If you asked me for my body…” Her offer hung, frank and outlandish.

“What kind of…” He paused, swallowed. “You yearn for me as I am?”

She nodded into his neck. He inhaled, the sound loud and wide in the room.

“I am not frightened. I…I would lie if I said I didn’t desire you.” The truth of her statement weighed them both down, tying them to the sheets, willingly and with surprise. She could not believe she had spoken aloud. And he seemed shocked.

He turned into her, curling into the middle of the bed, and his strong hand splayed on her hip. “Now it is my turn to disbelieve.”

Acting on impulse, on buried passion, she leaned into him and kissed him, featherlight and sudden, before he could shy away. The leanness of his lips was what she expected, the softness of them less so. His eyes were closed against her mouth, and before he could open them, she took another kiss, lingering, wondering, and then he took her into his arms, pressing her body against his, so that their mouths melted and their legs tangled. His reaction soared into her. Did he want her, too?

The heat of her center pressed into his leg, and the weight of his hardness ground into her belly. It broke the last barrier of questions in her mind. Yes, she wanted it all. For all the good it did her.

“You’d give me yourself?” he gasped as he broke their kiss, and his eyes were cloudy. “You’d take me now, fully, all of me?”

“I would,” she reaffirmed, meeting his gaze straight. “And I expect I’d find it beyond pleasurable.” The idea of his weight over her, his length within her, his arms under her, was enough to send a shiver of wishing and wanting into her bones, and she pushed into him, feeling his size, wondering what he might look like. Hoping he would like to see her, and would find her attractive. That his mouth would consume her, taste her, worship her. That his hands would run themselves over her flesh. She would let him bury in her, if that was to be the only way they could join. 

His hips pressed back at her, perhaps on their own accord, but he stayed there, the embarrassment gone, the desire halting pauses. They were meshed together, the length of his manhood a rod between them, and she reached up to stroke his face and run her palms up his chest as he ran his down her thighs.

“You ask this of me. Now?”

“I will ask this of you always,” she said.

He groaned softly. “I will always say yes.”

“Because of the magic?”

“Because I desire you. Magic has nothing to do with it.”

Did he mean it? He had no reason to lie on this, no reason to mislead. Did he tell her the truth of his heart? How she wanted to believe!

“If this is all you will give me of yourself, I beg you…let me know you, have you. If this is to be our lives, sequestered in this castle, let us take this comfort. Let it be our beginning,” she told him. “And I will be yours.”

“I will not deny that I ache for you,” he said. “That I have lusted after you for all the time I’ve known you.” The deep rumble of his voice in the cavern of his chest bubbled through her own, and something that had been tight unfurled inside of her.

“You want me? Knowing my faults, that I am not anything fancy? That I am…an uneasy woman?” She had to ask, to hear it.

He pulled her tighter and then spun her under him, his great shoulders and massive arms braced above. “Your disbelief is misplaced. Why should I not? I know you, your mind and your secrets. It only flames me further.”

She brought her hands up to his cheeks, fingertips grazing him featherlight. He rumbled against her touch, and lowered himself slowly, carefully, to cover her with his body, the heat of him dragging into her marrow. 

“Then you’ll give me this?” she asked, her fingertips finding the waist of his trousers, as his own pads drew up the hem of her chemise. “Please do. I want…you. Though you do not love me as you did the others.”

That drew him up. “The others? There was only the other one. And she was long ago. I believe I needed that rejection to fully understand you now.” He lowered his head to her neck, then gently suckled the sides of her breasts. 

“But you said…” Through the haze of newly-released desire, she recalled he’d said he had loved two. Two… Wild hope jumped into her bones, and she clamped it down, unable to fathom, unable to believe. Clutching him close, she closed her eyes and let him touch her under her nightgown. His hands, covered in the dense, velvet pads, ghosted over her skin. When she opened her eyes, she saw he was straddling her hips, questions still pouring from his body even as he obviously ached for her. If it was not their first time, she would have reached across the silence and the moment to touch him, to release him from his trousers, and stroke him.

“If I asked you again…” he suddenly said, perhaps gaining courage from her embrace. “If I offered you marriage…”

She froze, wishing and willing for him to stop. She didn’t know if she could refuse him again, and didn’t know if she could manage her pain if she allowed herself to love him. This way, this suspended time, in the physical way, they could be together, without any type of promise.

“Don’t ask me, my lord,” she pleaded, lifting up and pressing herself closer, hoping the distraction of her body and her breasts on his chest would silence him. “Because I will not be able to say the right thing.”

“What is the right thing?” he wondered, but his breathing hitched, and his arm came around her anyway to catch her up close. 

“I will say yes,” she admitted, whispering the last word. Now was not the time to be anything but truthful, come what may. “And it will devastate me.”

He shot upright, pulling her out of bed so they stood facing one another in the dim murk of morning. All desire between them hung suspended, forgotten in the intensity of his manner. In the soft grey and blue of the shadows, she saw his eyes on her, devouring her, pleading with her.

“How?” he demanded urgently, pressing her hands together with his. “How can marrying me devastate you? You have said I am a man to you, that I am handsome. What else can you mean?”

She closed her eyes against the truth, and nodded. “I have said those things, and I meant them. But…but you do not love me. And I have promised myself I will not let myself love again so that I do not need to feel the same brokenness once more. And marrying you? I can see it now. I will love you, and I will lose you.”

Saying the words caused the pain to rip itself through her chest, binding her breath and crippling her feet. If he had not gripped her so tightly, she might have sunk to her knees. She could feel the rejection already, could see it simmering in her future. It was done. The words were spent.

“You will love me?” he rasped.

“I suppose I already do,” she told him, opening her eyes to his. “Not that it does any good.”

“But Eilwen!” he shouted, the sound ripe and joyful, as if his words were finally released from a dam. “Why would I not love you? Of course I do! And I too know rejection! I too know pain! Can we not be allowed to have love between us? Can we not be allowed to find true happiness? Why must you think I will be the same as the other man, the one who cast you aside? Are you like the other girl, the maid I loved who left? No! Thank the gods for that. No, you are mine. My love. My wife?”

The moment he uttered the word, offered his love to her, the castle shook. As he named her wife, he fell to his knees, and the candelabras above their heads jittered and clattered with a thousand crystal lights. The ground under their feet tilted, and she stepped forward and clutched him to her, hugging his great head to her bosom, closing her eyes against the bright magic that shot from every crack of the castle and burned the snow from the window glass. Beneath her skin, she felt his body glow with heat, the sweat flowing fast between her breasts as she refused to let him go. 

Power. Might. Magick. 

It swirled around them, and yanked him from her, leaving her with empty arms and a sunken core. 

“No!” she screamed into the rising wind, fighting the brilliance and the heat. “…no…” The whisper ended as she fell to the floor, her fists tearing at her neck and at her heart, as if she could scratch it out and let it crumble in her palm. 

It was her worst fear, come true. 

She’d loved him only to lose him – to another woman, to his first love, to the magic. It didn’t matter. He was gone. She could not even see him, as the lights around her danced and blinded.


	9. Chapter 9

It felt like hours, but it might have only been minutes. The dust was thick when she finally opened her eyes, and the castle looked as though it had been shaken from the depths of the foundations. There was an odd clattering outside, as if a hundred feet were moving about, and she heard loud tinkering in the hall.

In his room, there was unearthly silence. Her neck felt heavy, and she pushed up to kneel.

Beside her, slumped against the table, was the bulk of the Beast. But immediately she could see his body was different. The hair was gone, and his feet were a man’s feet. His girth and his height seemed nearly the same, and she could see the strain and tug of his great muscles. Sadness poured into her. He was indeed a strapping man. To her, a beautiful man. 

One who would not need her now, for all he had called her his love.

He stirred, but seemed unable to lift his head. How she wanted to go to him, to tend him, to make sure he was all right. But she could leave now. Before he had strength. 

She could keep herself safe from heartache if she left.

As he rolled, his eyes still closed, dust pillowing up into the air, she saw his face and recognized it immediately against the skin, for his transformation was not so different for a woman who had memorized his every feature. 

She brought herself to her feet, and leaned over him, kissing his cheek, wishing she could recall their other kisses more vividly, and then left the bedroom at once, her heart tearing as she did.

Behind her, she thought she heard him. “Eilwen…” His voice still deep and mellifluous, sounding hoarse and tired. Did he think of her, the first thing as he woke? She wondered if she only hoped she heard her name. That she imagined it. That would be like her to do so. 

She paused in the hall, realizing her own room was immediately to the left. Shocked, she pushed open the door, but the wide familiar space was empty. She took her plain skirts out and tied them on as she stepped out to the hallway, ignoring the desire to go back and see him, to touch him. 

He was no longer a beast. He was a man, and with that, everything changed.

Past the servants, still clearing their clothes and straightening their eyes, past the maids who stared at the feather dusters still in their hands. Past the great sitting room, and the banquet hall. 

Every step was harder, a struggle. Every move toward the gigantic doors felt impossible.

As she stepped outside into the blinking sunlight, she saw hordes of soldiers, grooms, and even townspeople, walking about, milling in wonder. No one noticed another woman in their midst, and she was not wearing her finery. 

It would perhaps be easy to take a horse, but she didn’t know how she’d explain that she needed one. Perhaps none of the grooms knew who she was…or perhaps they did, and they’d forbid her to leave. 

The road leading out of the grounds was now covered in green grass, slick with rose petals, strewn with tulips. She took it, her feet begging her to reconsider, to turn back to him. She wondered if he was awake, if he looked for her. If he remembered her at all.

Likely not, she told herself. Likely he had forgotten her the minute the curse lifted. Likely he would go back to being a desired, healthy, intensely handsome man, who would have a choice of maids to marry. Likely she had played her part. There were always old stories from her time, but they all had maidens at their centers, not a used old woman with a scar carried on her soul. 

This much she now remembered.

The only trouble was the part she’d played in this story had left her with a broken heart once again, which somehow seemed to still go on beating.

I loved him.

Love him.

Love.

…love…


	10. Chapter 10

The edge of the woods loomed, and she paused, considering and wondering. Would she make it through before dusk? Would whatever time and space barrier still exist, and she’d tumble back into her world, or the future…or whatever it was? Would the wild cats still wander, ready to pounce once evening settled? Fear and agony wound themselves in her gut. Could she face them again, knowing her Beast could not save her this time? 

And through the woods, what would she do? Set up a shop, perhaps. Start a new life once more. 

The thought ate at her, and she felt her heartbeat slow. Would she survive again? The pain of loneliness, the ache of an empty bed, the knowing she was cast aside once more? Perhaps she ought to enter the woods and wait for the panthers to take her, to tear her heart from her so she would not have the anguish for the rest of her life.

Unable to choose, but unable to go back, she sank to her knees, pressing her forehead to the smooth bark of the nearest birch, her nails digging into the softness of the tree. Dry, hacking sobs wrenched from her, twisting her stomach and trembling down her fingers.

“Eilwwwwwen!”

The shout came from very far away, and she looked up, blinded, uncertain if the sound came from behind her or through the trees ahead of her. Standing, staggering, she moved into the brush, the thorns of the lowest branches scraping at her cheeks and ripping her hair.

“Eilwen! Stop! Stop!” The sound was ragged, punctured with pain, and she turned, squinting against the deep late afternoon sun. A figure was running, as best it might and limping slightly, and she could not make it out at first, did not trust herself to see anything that might give hope. 

“Come back!” 

It was the sheer panic in his voice, coupled with the anguish, and the obvious desperation, that made her step out of the woods.

He was nearer now, and she could see the greatness of his shoulders, the width of his chest, the strength of his thighs, and she felt faint once more, but this time because she knew that she could not stop loving him, even if she ran from him. And she knew she wanted him, whatever he offered her. 

When he reached her, he paused, trembling, his hands twitching as though he wished to whisk her up into an embrace, but uncertain if he should. Behind him, black against the sun, came figures: grooms, one with a horse, and perhaps a manservant, all hurrying after their master.

“You ran? You…left me?” he whispered, his voice haggard, his breathing fast and tight. As he stepped closer, she finally looked up into his eyes and the moment for fleeing was gone. In his face, and his eyes, she saw a deep, pure esteem, an earnest emotion paired with the freshest of tears. 

“I’m sorry,” she admitted. “It felt…safer.”

“Safer than me? Than my arms?” 

She shook her head. “Oh no. But I thought…I worried. What if everything changed? What if you did not wish for me? Look at you.” She gestured helplessly. “You’re not a beast anymore.”

“No,” he hedged.

“You’re a man,” she pointed out the obvious.

“And you’re my wife,” he said bluntly, determinedly, and her breathing stopped. He noticed at once, and pulled on her palms, so they were hand-fasted once more as before. “That is…you will marry me, won’t you? Though I have changed? You cannot leave me…please. If you do…but you cannot. You cannot. You’re mine. Please. Please stay with me. You are the only thing tethering me to myself. I am not whole without you.”

Did he mean to keep her? Truly? Was her life made? 

“The curse ends if a woman agrees to marry you?” she wondered.

“No,” he shook his head. “It is not that, not only a wedding. It is love. That I would learn to love a woman, that she would tear the bitterness from me. And she must love me for myself—what goodness I might have inside. I had thought if I kept a woman, married her, showed her…she might grow to love me, and I her, and thereby break the curse.”

“Both of us?” She was shocked. “We both needed to love one another? As equals?”

He nodded, squeezing her hands. “Yes. Only then. I am sorry the magic kept my tongue silent. I would have told you I loved you months ago. But…I was not allowed to say it first. It was forbidden.”

“But…then it’s over. You—everyone—it’s all…healed?” Whatever “it” was. Someday she must ask him what happened, if she could ever understand this existence at all.

“Yes, so I understand. All healed.” He smiled at her, and it dazzled her. As a Beast, he had never smiled fully except with his eyes. 

The relief of the explanation washed over her two-fold. The curse wasn’t broken by a forced marriage then, but by their honest and joint love! It would never have happened otherwise. 

If she needed any proof of his honesty and his heart, this was it, and could never be any bolder.

“Eilwen,” he pressed her hands, and she broke out of her reverie. “For all this magic, you haven’t answered my question yet.”

“What question?” 

He was anxious. “You…left. I suppose you could – nothing is holding you here. With the curse lifted, clearly you love me as strongly as I do you, even if you do not wed me. But…please. Don’t leave. Will you marry me? Be mine…forever, in the truest sense of the word? I will not ever put you aside. I will love you with a pureness and a desperation that will never fade. I promise you this. And if I ever cease to love you, may the curse return to me.”

His earnestness was palpable and washed over her like a wave. The answer spilled without giving her mind a moment to consider. “I…but of course. Yes. Yes, I will. I will marry you.” She bent her forehead over their hands, giving in to the weight of her admittance. “And yes, you know that I love you.”

He glanced down ruefully at his body. “And this? You will still wish to share this?”

“Why would I not?”

“You preferred me…” He glanced behind them. His grooms and manservants were standing nearby, but not so close they could overhear, and all of them had turned their backs to offer privacy. His voice deepened. “You preferred me as the Beast. We never…consummated it, though believe me, I would have done so today given another moment. And now…as a man…I fear I’ve come out wider and thicker than I used to be, and with a limp I cannot explain.”

She reached up and touched the beard spilling over his unshaven cheeks – five hundred years of stubble perhaps. “Don’t change a thing. You are you. I’ll want you however I get you. Besides, it comes as a relief to me that you’re not some strapping young boy. This—you as a great man…the massiveness of your size is preferable.”

“Truly?”

“Very much so.”

His eyes took on a glint of mischief. “How long must we wait for the wedding? I confess I haven’t even thought of a woman in my bed until you started sleeping in my arms, and now I cannot think of much else.”

She laughed. “I hope you are this lusty always.”

“I will match you every time,” he said staunchly, and drew her close. “And while I will not ravish you this minute, I will do so for hours on end as soon as we say our vows. How about tomorrow?”

She melted into him, giving in, lost in the hope and the happiness, unbelieving, yet believing completely. “Do you think we might marry today?”

“Tomorrow is not soon enough,” he agreed. “Today it is. I will marry you before sunset.” 

He drew her in, crushed her, and kissed her with a passion that spanned eons. Their mouths crashed together, devoured each other, and mingled with a desire that neither of them paused, and their hands spun and shifted along the whisper of the thin cotton between them. He pulled her so tightly against his chest, she wondered if he thought to combine their skins. It was all a promise of the evening to come, of their marriage and their love. 

He paused pulled away, but only a fraction. She could still smell the wildness on his skin; earth and green, but now with the musk of a man. “And Eilwen…you must name me. Will you do that?”

“I will,” she promised.


	11. Chapter 11

As they wandered back to the castle, his servants—their servants?—trailing behind them, she slipped her arm through his elbow and looked up at him. He still towered over her, but she was mightily pleased with his size—the expanse of his shoulders and chest, and the width of his waist and legs. She would have been alarmed if he had appeared a beautiful youth, and wondered if the magic accounted for her age. Would the warlock have been so generous? Either way, she was thrilled. The limp was nothing; it mattered as little to her as when he was covered in dense, dark fur. She glanced up again, now that the castle shadowed them, and looked at his hair. It was dark as well, but for two streaks of grey at his temples. Was it time on him, or simply the many years of sorrow? 

New questions crowded her mind, picking at her senses. Did they exist now in her world? Had time sped here to catch up? Would they all walk off his grounds to discover how modernity had scarred and revised the face of the world? She wondered what he would make of it, if so. Or did they still exist elsewhere? In a place where old legends were real? It must be so – magick did not exist where she had once lived. Perhaps it really was she who had stepped through time and space. Perhaps she still was the stranger. Looking at their arms interlaced, she realized she did not mind. It was a fair price to pay for this happiness. She wondered if it was all a dream. It was so heady, so full of perfection, it felt surreal.

“You’ll need a name for the marriage,” she said slowly, coming out of her musings, grasping at the practical. “Won’t you have paperwork with your lordly title?” She assumed he must be something fancy, given the castle and servants. 

“Perhaps, buried somewhere. But that will take time. I don’t want to waste any more time.” He looked down at her with a face full of so much joy, it choked her. 

“But…won’t you want to use your real name?”

“Who that man was…I am not him any longer. It has been hundreds of years, Eilwen. I don’t want to return to that person in any way. You will name me, and it is what I will be called by all. I have always fancied Meurig.”

She burst out laughing. “You have not!”

“What is wrong with it?”

“You recall it is my father’s name?”

“Oh. Of course,” he looked sheepish. “You likely don’t want to be married to a man with your father’s name.”

She leaned in and he bent slightly to catch her whisper. “Nor call it out in the throes of lovemaking.”

He swallowed, and pulled her tighter. Passion froze their tongues for a moment while they attempted to gather themselves as they approached the castle again, now swarming with so many people it looked unreal.

She cleared her throat. “I suppose Menw would be too cruel.”

“It would be a remembrance, which can keep a man on his path if he would wander…” he hedged. “Though it would always remind of the dark times, and I don’t think I should need a reminder of that for the rest of my days. I will never forget the pain…the loneliness.”

“How about a good thing, then? I should call you Ithell – for you are generous and my lord.”

He looked thoughtful and seemed to consider it, but before he could answer they were surrounded by servants, the buzzing of their excited chatter rising and falling. It sounded like bees when their box was opened, and she could not hear herself think or pick out a single person. Her betrothed had a voice that still boomed, and most stopped to listen to him give orders, which she could barely catch. All she knew was she was whisked away from him by three of the maids. Panic filled her, and she half turned to go back to him, but he was nodding at some of the grooms. 

Yet the ties between them seemed as strong as before, for he glanced up and found her, and met her eyes. He smiled, and nodded eagerly, and she realized he truly did mean for a whirlwind wedding before sunset. 

As she turned back to go up the stairs, the singular voices of the maids finally landed in her ears. Rose, Rosalie, and Rosemary, it seemed, were in a tizzy about finding something suitable for her to wear.

“—but she hasn’t got a thing that’s white in her closet!”

“Can’t we just have the wardrobe ladies—”

“—magick is done now! These things will take the usual amount of time—”

“Master said he won’t wait, it must be within the hour! I never—”

“He must deeply love you, Mistress,” Rosemary said suddenly, directing all the attention on her. “This is quite quick! He was near burning with this to happen at once. I’m surprised he’ll wait at all for us to dress you!”

She flushed, but before she could answer, the others took over again.

“—but of course, he was in rags himself, surely—”

“Did you see Llew? Even after all this time invisible, he’s a sight for—”

“Let it be, we’ve work—”

“Stop!” she said, and they all halted mid-movement as if frozen. “Stop, please. There’s no need to fret. I’ve the cream silk just made, and that will do. Simply clean up my…” she waved a hand vaguely at her face and hair. “Whatever you need to do to make me presentable.”

“Cream!” Rose said. “You can’t!”

“I can, and I will. I’m not a virgin who must wear something bleached.” She realized her mistake at once when their eyes went round. “Not…not from here. Him. We…it didn’t… I suppose you wouldn’t know. Before…this…I was married. It’s over, now…he…the vows were legally broken, and he set me aside. It’s no matter, now, of course, only that I needn’t wear white.”

They began to move, tentatively, sneaking glances at one another and at her. She wondered if she had broken a code. Should she not have spoken of her divorce? Good heaven, it had been so much easier before! Now there were rules, and she grasped at the wisp of memory, hoping she did not betray how common she was in this castle of splendor.

“Does…” Rosemary’s voice squeaked, and she cleared her throat. “Does the Master…know?”

“That I’m not a virgin? That I was once wed? Of course he does,” she said crisply.

They seemed a bit faint with the news, so she pushed open her bedroom door and strode in. She was overtly eager to get the primping over with, and realized it was an ache to be wed, a deep overwhelming need to twine her soul and her life with his. To be in his company again, and to have no one ever question it.

They primped over her, and she let their words wash the air, instead keeping her eyes steady on the mirror to catch them doing anything too outlandish. She was determined to appear as herself. 

They had a spat about her hair, which they wanted to do up in curls and ribbons. Ridiculous. She’d never done such a thing with it, and wouldn’t today. They wanted to paint her lips red, but they settled for a demure pink. She rubbed off half the rouge before they slipped her into the cream silk, hurrying to latch up the shoes as the clock chimed and a knock came pounding at the door.

“Goodness!” Rosemary gasped as it swung open without waiting. “Master! You can’t—!”

“Is my bride ready?”

He bent into the room, the shadows of his manservants hovering in the hallway behind him. When she turned around, her throat closed up with emotions she was too trained to put to words. This…this was nearly too much.

His dark trousers and jacket fit his form perfectly, framing the muscles of his shoulders and thighs, trimming around his hips and biceps. The clothing was nostalgic and classic, and she blinked twice to be sure she saw him truly. He’d kept the beard, though it was cleaned around the edges, and his hair was still long enough to be clubbed back at his neck. But he was her Beast. Her man. It was still him.

She stood and he paused as if struck by thunder, his eyes widening. 

“Good God.” His voice scratched.

Glancing down she twitched the silk skirt, where it cascaded like liquid cream from her waist and hips, hugging the right places of what curves she had. The wide neckline offered the skin of her chest and bosom, and her hair, left down and tumbled, brushed the bareness of her shoulder blades.

“Surely you’ve seen this one before,” she said, self-conscious.

“I would have remembered,” he said hoarsely. He half-turned and waved a hand. One of his groomsmen entered, a small chest clutched in his fingers. 

She watched as her love lifted the cover of the box and carefully pulled out ropes of pearls and emeralds.

“They are too fine!” she protested as he considered the jewels in his meaty fists. “I am happy as I am. I simply want to wed you!”

He visibly quivered at her words, and his eyes closed for a moment. When he met her gaze, he seemed to be holding fire in his soul. She ached for him, to be alone with him, but they were forced apart by the very presence of the servants.

“All these jewels, and many more besides, belong to you now,” he said gruffly. “But today, I simply wish you to wear this.”

He pulled out a slender crown of gold set with tiny diamonds, followed by a slim band of more diamonds for her finger.

Finally bridging the space between them, he set the diadem on her hair lightly, and then slipped the ring on her hand. Where their fingers met, heat simmered, and he held onto her skin as he gazed down at her. She stared up at him, the sight of his face still wavering between the beast and the man. He was both at the same time to her, and she wanted it all.

“Properness be damned,” he whispered, and bent from his great height to kiss her. It was not a chaste kiss. It was hard and long and heated and her insides pooled into intense explosions of desire. His hand was at her back, pressing her closer, until the clearing of throats made them pull apart. He did not seem embarrassed at all, though her own cheeks burned.

“So! To the Great Hall for the wedding!” he boomed, and offered her his arm.


	12. Chapter 12

They swept out of the room, she still trying to catch her breath, and he in full command and clearly enjoying it. Their flustered staff followed in a tizzy, their bumbling and buzzing over their Master’s obvious delight in his bride fizzing and whispering behind them like foam.

“You flustered them on purpose,” she whispered.

His mouth twitched, and when his glance slid to her, the smile bloomed under the beard. “I’ll do it every day. On purpose.” 

The flush on her neck rose higher, and he pressed his other hand over hers, where it rested on his forearm. “There won’t be a feast, Eilwen. Is that alright? No time…and everyone is still waking.”

“I don’t want a feast,” she said truthfully, though she wondered once more what she’d gotten herself into. She had so many logistical questions, so many pieces still didn’t make sense to her. But everything stopped when they entered the great hall.

The hall had been gloomy in the past, but someone had finally flung open all the shutters on the enormous windows. Deep gold sunset pooled in between the columns, and corners were grey and dusty but hinted at promising luster if given the proper cleaning. All the staff, the grooms, the soldiers, the maids, were standing according to their station and rank, and every face turned as one to stare at them.

Somewhere, high above them, an ancient organ cranked into gear, and it would have almost been ludicrous had not the most beautiful quartet of voices soared to match it. 

“Who is that?” she asked, reminding herself not to turn and stare.

“Some of the staff,” he said, sounding pleased. “They like to show off their other talents when they can and I didn’t have the heart to rebuff them today.”

The aisle to the back of the hall seemed impossibly long, and a figure in white stood at the end of it.

“Who did you get to marry us?”

“The chapel priest.”

“There’s a chapel priest?” More questions piled into her mind. Everything was happening so fast, spinning so brightly and yet, she was so deliriously, deliciously happy she couldn’t stop fast enough to ask. She was going to marry him! 

“Have you decided on your name?” she whispered instead, opting to focus on something much smaller and concrete.

“Ithell is fine for the formal, but I am not your lord, Eilwen,” he said lowly, bowing his head to certain men as he passed, but his words were for her alone. 

“Simply call me Hael in private.”

“A name that is both generous and well. It is a good ending to it all,” she agreed.

They reached the priest, a mousy, bright-eyed man with a surprisingly deep and jovial voice and a flair for comedy. 

Her beast…her man. Hael. He said his vows so loudly the stones around them seemed to shake, staring down at her with such passion and devotion she didn’t know how she could possibly match it and show him she felt exactly the same. 

When it was her turn, she hoped her voice rang clear and bell-like, and she gripped his meaty hands with all the strength of her being. 

At last they were declared husband and wife, and he bent down from his height to smother her with a dashing kiss. The priest did not seem inclined to humph in disapproval, so they kept on kissing until a few cheers picked up and suddenly the hall was roaring with joy.

That finally broke their lips, but he lowered his face to her neck and held her briefly a moment longer. 

“You won’t leave me again?” he whispered against her throat, a tremor pebbling through his body and into hers. The beloved man! He still worried!

“I have no need.” She pulled back and took his face in her palms. “I thought my love for you would not be enough. But now we are married, and more—clearly our love is enough.”

He kissed her again, quickly, and turned to the room and raised another arm, starting another round of cheering. 

“We’ll say our words, but be ready,” he told her, as they walked down the stairs to the waiting staff.

“Ready for what?”

His eyes were filled with purpose. “I plan to take you into my bed every night, starting tonight as I said, and will lavish you with kisses, even as you swell with my babes.” The idea seemed to inflame him further. 

“Bearing your children will be my joy,” she told him seriously. “All of it.”

And that was all the time they had for three hours, until she turned and realized he was no longer nearby, but had been corralled by half a dozen elderly men who seemed to be talking politics or law. Her feet, however, were ready to be pulled out of the fancy shoes, and she didn’t think she could last much longer without him, naked, and finally claiming her. How did a bride say such a thing?

They still seemed to be connected, though, for as she looked at him, his head came up and he found her, as if scenting her and able to read her. 

He detached himself elegantly, and was at her side within moments.

“It’s time to retire, wife,” he said to those near at hand. She did not need to look at him to know he relished using the word.

“Happily,” she murmured. He whisked them out so swiftly that hardly anyone could bid them good night and start another round of niceties.


	13. Chapter 13

“My room or yours?” he asked, as they climbed the stairs.

“I shouldn’t want my own room,” she said. “Won’t we want to share?”

“The women always have their own rooms,” he said slowly. “Is it different in your time and place?”

“Usually when a man and woman marry, they join their homes and their bedrooms.”

He suddenly grinned, the smile once again dazzling. “I like this. We’ll do it!”

“Will the staff be appalled?” she wondered, suddenly dismayed. There was so much to learn!

“Likely,” he said, gleeful. “But they’ll get used to it over the decades.”

She smothered a giggle, and then he was there, opening the door to his bedroom and other quarters and ushering her in with a strong hand on her lower back. 

The door barely caught behind them, and he was upon her, bearing down on her with a kiss that didn’t feel like it would ever end, and his hands roving her hips and buttocks with abandon, rubbing her skin through the silk and curling his fingers around curves. 

He broke their kiss to breathe. “Will it come off easily? Otherwise I am still strong enough to rip it.” He nearly growled, and the sound reminded her of his ways as the Beast, and she shivered with delight. “Either way, take it off fast. Please.” He clawed at his necktie.

“My love,” she stopped him. “The sun has not fully set. We have all night. We have tomorrow if we ask it. Let me.”

She began to undress him, and his breathing turned ragged as she peeled off his coat and then his vest and his shirt. The expanse of his skin reminded her of his body as the Beast, though now the hair was sparer, spreading only over his chest, trailing his navel and disappearing into his trousers. Still, she was very glad he was not gleaming, nor hairless, and ran her fingers through the fuzz on his pectorals. Under the dark hair, his skin was very warm.

“You’re going to undo me,” he rasped, gripping her hips. “I’ve been wanting to ravish you since I met you.”

“Why didn’t you?” she asked, slowly unbuttoning his pants.

“Would you have let me?” 

“Not at the first,” she admitted, turning to allow him access to the buttons on her backbone. “It took a few weeks. Months. And then…” Embarrassment glued her voice.

“And then?” His breath was hot against her neck as he unhooked her gown with agonizing care.

“Then I…I was afraid of how much I felt for you. Both your heart and your…body. It’s why I asked such logistical questions.”

“About my anatomy?”

“…yes.”

He kissed her shoulder, now bare. “Did you ache to see me as I was? Truly?”

“Didn’t I say so?”

“No.”

“Hael…”

He sighed, happy and lustful. “Say it again.”

“What?”

“My name.” He kissed behind her ear. “Say it. Please.”

“Hael,” she breathed, her head falling back. “My love. My…”

“Your what?”

“My…what do you want me to say? How much I want you?”

He kissed her collarbone. “Tell me.”

“I thought I made myself quite clear this morning. If anything, you were hesitant.”

“I disbelieved my hopes could ever come true.”

“What did you hope?” The verbal chatter made her itch with longing, even as he undressed her slowly, unwinding her silk, the action a promise itself.

“I hoped you’d want me,” he said. “That someday, I could be within you…”

“Again, that has been obvious. That I wanted it. You. Your…body.” She made her point by reaching, finally, inside his clothes and gripping his length, pulling him from the trousers. He swayed, almost staggering, his eyes closed. He was thick and long and hot. Smooth and iron, silk and rock. She wanted to taste him, feel him. It was the same, as if nothing had changed from hours before. The recognition of such passion was a relief. The familiarity of their touch was a caress and permission. 

He clutched her as if he would fall without holding to her. His need for her, both passionate and practical, nearly undid her emotions, which were already beyond control.

“And I wanted…you,” he continued, raspy. “As yourself. No matter how uneasy you were. I wanted you to love me as I fell in love with you.”

“Hael.”

“What?”

“Never doubt me,” she whispered. “I…wanted you then, as I do now. Desired you. Loved you. Still do. So very much.” Saying it reminded her how much, and the need seared her womb. “I would have let you ravish me when you were cursed, if you had asked. I nearly released you from your constraints this morning, ached to see you, feel you inside of me.” She slowly wound her palm around his cock as she said the words. “I ached to hear you say you loved me…”

He groaned and growled at the same time. “Oh gods. Eilwen!”

“But…you forget, my darling, that I have my own worries,” she reminded, still touching him as he slowly pulled the dress off of her body. “Am I enough? Too much of the other world? Do I belong? Will you still want me? I sometimes didn’t want you to change—I worried… You’ll be desired by all the women now, you’ll have your pick. You’ll…leave me.” She paused and closed her eyes. Old pain laced her throat. “I cannot bear it if you left me. If you cast me off.”

“Never,” he said, and it was so stoutly said and with so much determination and honesty, she believed him, even if the broken magick hadn’t already proven it so. She’d never tire of hearing it. He buried his face in her hair as she touched him once more and he gave a soft moan. “As I said, may I be cursed anew should I ever hurt you.”

He let her dress pool on the thick carpet and she stepped out in little but the pale lingerie, stockings and heels. He walked back a pace and surveyed her, his eyes—familiar and yet feral—cloudy with want.

“I may not be very gentlemanly,” he said suddenly, still staring. “I find I’m too overwhelmed with this finally happening.”

“I don’t think I need much romancing,” she agreed. “And you forget I am no shy virgin. I want you to…devour me, and I will do so with you.”

“This wedding night is only the beginning of how I will spend my life ravishing you,” he said. Indeed, his member pressed against the fabric of his undergarments, released from his trousers when she had stroked him. The sight made her go weak in the knees. He was so thick, so long! Neediness pulsed inside her.

“Now what?” she asked.

He hesitated, then pulled down his pants, shoving off his shoes. “I suppose I don’t know. It was much easier earlier today when we were already undressed.”

She grinned. “It was, wasn’t it?”

He stalked toward her, the limp more pronounced, in nothing but stockings and his last strip of clothing, which did not hide the outline of his cock. “If I had not interrupted us…what would you have done?”

“Asked you to take me.”

“I would have.”

“Perhaps…it would be better if we started from where we left off,” she said.

“Indeed?”

She waited for him to get closer, then put her hand on his bare chest. “Then I could show you what I meant to do earlier.”

His breathing stopped for a second, and his eyes closed. Under her hand, she felt his heart stutter, then speed up. 

“Do I really…have such an effect?” She stood on the tips of her toes and kissed his neck, his ear, barely reaching. 

He nodded, unable to speak as she touched him again, as she dipped her hand under the fabric to stroke him, skin on skin. The tip of him was wet, a bead of desire slipping into her palm. It only made her want him more, if such a thing were possible. It was as if no time had lapsed since the morning, when they’d nearly consummated an unspoken love. Yet here they were, back where they’d started today, yet bound by love and vows. The weight of the gold on her finger, the glimmer of gold on his, was proof of it. 

Hael gathered her up, squeezing her bottom, letting his thick fingers slide under her buttocks. “To restart, then, I believe we were in my bed.” He carried her to the quilts and overturned sheets in two strides, then placed her gently in the middle. “You were here.”

She kicked off her heels and they landed with a thump at the bottom of the bed. “And I was only wearing my chemise.”

His eyes were dark. “This is better.”

“It’s much shorter,” she protested. “And these ridiculous stockings. Get rid of yours, too.”

She peeled her silk off, and he rumpled his, shaking his head.

“What?” she asked.

“This is an unromantic thing to be doing in the middle of lovemaking.”

She eyed his cock, still rigid and straight. “It doesn’t seem to bother you too much.”

He whipped around, much faster and quicker than she expected, as if a piece of the Beast’s strength still lived in his sinews and bone. Suddenly he hovered over her, bracing his arms on both sides of her shoulders and pressing his length into the soft middle of her pelvis, where her flesh and wetness soaked through the fine cotton of her undergarments.

“The only thing that will bother me now,” he said hoarsely. “Is you still wearing clothing.”

“I’ll take it off if you do the same,” she said, but he didn’t give her a chance. His right fist closed on the center of her bodice and pulled, hard, rendering the pale fabric in half. The tear went fast, exposing her completely, and she gasped at the sudden coolness on her belly and breasts. The shock delighted her but also let insecurities flood in. Her hand went to cover her sex.

“I…I am not a…a nubile—.”

“If you think I wanted some young thing barely into adulthood, stop now,” he told her, staring hungrily at her bosom. “I’m not young or agile either, and I’m certainly glad I don’t have to mince about carefully in bed. Not after all these years.”

“We haven’t discussed this, though,” she said softly, realizing so many of her questions were still unanswered, for all she was certain he was her match.

“Discussed what? How much I love you? Desire you? Wish you to be my partner in all things? How beautiful I think you are?” He removed her hand from her curls and looked at all of her, his dark eyes so purely filled with esteem, trust, and adoration. “I feel it in my bones, Eilwen. We are meant to fit—in all the ways.”

Still suspended over her, he lowered himself again and pressed his hardness onto her core, their bare chests finally touching, and they both closed their eyes to moan. 

“So you won’t be upset if I am…passionate in bed?” she murmured into his neck, kissing it, biting gently. He gasped and gripped her hips. “That I am lusty, and am not virgin?”

“It’s been several hundred years, but none of that will erase the fact that I am not, either,” he reminded her. “Now. I believe I was here earlier today.”

He pulled himself up enough to start suckling the sides of her breasts, then moved to her nipples. The other huge palm massaged whichever he neglected with his mouth. She tried to put her arms around him, delighted to discover that while he was not as huge as the Beast by any means, he was still great enough that she could not wrap her limbs completely round his shoulders and torso. 

She inhaled sharply as he went, as his lips moved to her stomach and his hands squeezed her buttocks. And then he was there, covering her womanhood with his mouth, inhaling her with such bliss she was torn between the pleasure he brought her and the delight in seeing him so happy. 

“I have been waiting to taste you,” he said to her, his voice rumbling against the soft skin of her bottom. “I’ve wanted to do—so much. Every time I thought of you, I thought of how I would…”

He descended again, and she tried to think of something to say, but the pleasure won over, and soon she couldn’t help but fist the sheets as his finger slipped into her and his tongue still danced on her.

“Hael!” she gasped, pulling her hips up slightly. “Wait!”

His head came up, mussed and disheveled, looking dazed. “What is it?”

“I want…you. I don’t want my pleasure without you.” 

“I’m afraid I won’t last, even though this is our wedding night. It’s been too long, and…” He laid his head against the inside of her thigh, then kissed it. “You deserve a release as well as I.”

“You seem to think a woman will not take her pleasure from sex. I have ached for you as well, and I promise you it won’t take me much, either, once we are joined.” She said it with certainty, knowing her body, her preferences. 

He slid off the end of the bed in one movement, staggering only slightly when his limp unbalanced him. But his eyes were on her, her body, her face. She sat up to watch him while she took off the rags of her wedding chemise.

His undergarment was thin, and the liquid eagerness of his sex darkened the material. Her mouth went dry as he drew off the fabric, finally exposing himself in full nudity. He was big, both in his manhood and his muscles. It was as if the Beast had lost most of his hair, his tail, and shrunk down slightly, but the strength was even more apparent in the ligaments of his arms and legs, the greatness of his limbs, the width of his chest. When she looked at his face, she still saw him – the man and the beast, the echoes of both. It was still him, and he was ready for her, hard and straight.

“Oh my. Hael,” she whispered. “You’re a god yourself!”

“Don’t say that,” he growled. “Unless you allow me to call you a goddess, for you are that to me, in so many ways.” He closed his fist over the largeness of his cock, as if testing the weight of it, his eyes still trained on her. He drew in a breath, then climbed back into the bed, and over her, his elbows at her shoulders, her face in his hands, the tip of him finding her center all in one fluid glide.

“I love you,” he said, sincere and earnest. “My beauty. My life.” He kissed her soundly, pushing into her wet, soft depth as he did. The thickness of him was sublime, though she instinctively pulled up her knees to allow the entire length of him to fit. It was an age-old dance, a rhythm they fell to as if listening to the same music. She hadn’t misled him – her body was ready, her limbs quivering as she climbed toward her release.

Above her, she could hear his heart, booming in his ribs, and then his breathing hitched as he paused.

“What is it?” she asked, holding her breath against falling, yet wanting desperately to feel him press hard into her hips and into her body, knowing she would be undone in another movement.

“I told you, I am unable…you are…” He was incoherent, his eyes closed.

She could feel the tensing of his muscles, the smallest additional engorgement of his member within her, and moved her hips up, taking in the weight of him, pressing herself against his pelvis where she knew it would undo her. And with him deeply embedded, she gave in, crying out without words, arching and grabbing him tight as the waves pulsed through her, unseeing.

“Eilwen!” He crashed into her womb, thrusting suddenly and without inhibitions, as if his body could not contain his lust a moment longer. The heat of his seed filled her and the knowledge of it sent her spiraling again, linking one release to the other as he rode his pleasure, his great body straining against the air itself as his hips rocked and he squeezed her close.

And then he collapsed, limp, onto one arm, taking deep breaths as his body shook. The duskiness of his skin was covered with a fine shimmer of sweat, and his eyes were still closed. She gazed at him, still amazed, half expecting to wake from a dream. But everything felt so real and physical. This was her reality, as unbelievable as it was. 

It had to be.


	14. Chapter 14

He lay inside her yet, pulsing with her last shudders, his hips wedged with hers and the wild and green scent of him covering her. It smelled like a home she would never tire of enjoying. 

She brought a shaking hand to run her fingers through his beard and along his jaw. “Hael. Husband. How I love you.”

His eyes opened at that to meet hers, the bronze in the chocolate of them soft and content in a way they’d never been before. “I promise I will tell you so each day, if you will do the same. I’ll never tire of hearing it.”

“I promise,” she said. “Several times a day.”

“The statement of love or relations?”

“Hael!” she laughed. “You’ve found humor!”

“Well, which is it?” He gripped her far hip with a meaty palm, a smile hidden under the beard, his eyes twinkling.

“Both. Love and sex.”

“Excellent. Our married life will be bliss, then.”

Their conversation was easier now. The magick no longer held his tongue, and she found that words, from her old life, did not seem to catch the same way. 

The sunlight still poured into the room from the far windows, gold and ochre. Everything was deep butter or dark grey shadow, and if she squinted her eyes at him, she could almost imagine she lay with the Beast, and not the husband she called Hael. If she was truthful, she would say she desired him both ways. 

Yet she was glad they had been able to be married with all the trimmings. It made it all feel more real. A great swell of love and joy overcame her, suddenly and with such staggering power she felt as if her body settled into the new space and time of the existence. 

For a moment, all her worries were drowned in certainty. 

This was her destiny. 

This was her place. 

He was her man. 

And even if it was not true, even if this day was a dream and she woke to find him a Beast once more, she would still love him the same, still know his mind, still take him to her bed.

“How many times do you suppose we can create such bliss together tonight alone?” she asked, saucy. He shifted slightly, and she felt him fill her again slowly where they were joined, where he had yet to leave her. 

“I admit I had almost forgotten the ways of men and women until I met you,” he said softly, his voice a rumble as he grew within her. 

“Didn’t you pleasure yourself as the Beast?” She drew in a breath as he pushed deeper. The idea was delicious, just in the imagining. “Or you never had urges?”

“Are all women—”

“Yes, in my time, some are this brazen to ask,” she cut him off, dragging her fingers down his spine and grasping his buttocks. “And want answers.”

He groaned and lowered his chest to hers. Her nipples went hard at the contact. “It was different. I…I rarely had such desires. Until…you…and then…”

She pressed him closer, kissing his ear, eliciting short gasps from him as he offered careful, slow thrusts. “Then you did. Tell me you did.”

His arms were iron again around her, one hand finding her bottom as well, the other holding her so tight it was as if they were melted. 

“Gods. Eilwen…” He buried his face in her neck. His cock pushed in and out of her, so deep his balls cradled the soft flesh of her womanhood. She pushed back, finding the pressure easily, still filled with desire and need.

Taking his face in her palms, she kissed him and then admitted, “I did. I touched myself even in the months before you rescued me and were injured. When I started to daydream of being with you, I would pull up the skirts and—”

He took her mouth to silence her. “I’m trying to make this time last longer, my love. Such words will yet undo me quickly.”

“But don’t you wish to know?”

“Desperately.”

“Then—”

He silenced her again with a deep kiss, then pressed his forehead to hers. “I will want exacting detail later. But for now, hear this—yes.”

“Yes?” It was getting harder to think as he pulled in and out of her, agonizing and delightful. 

“Yes,” he breathed, entering her faster. “I gave myself pleasure, when I was the Beast, and thought of you.”

“Oh!” She couldn’t hold in the sound let alone stop the vision of it, and fell into the void of a hard release, pulsing and black and delightful. As she bridged into another, and then another, as if the waves would not stop, she felt him pause before shuddering, his shout wordless, but the meaning clear. 

They lay, dazzled with one another, for long moments as their heartbeats calmed. 

“I didn’t realize my form so inspired you when I was beast-like,” he said, but his voice was warm. “Had I known…”

“You could have ravished me, and I would have been exceedingly happy,” she told him honestly. 

“I am lesser than…now,” he said, raising above her to look at her face. “My humanity is a smaller body. I’ve a limp, I’m older, a—.”

She pushed up her hips, the slickness of their lovemaking dripping between them. “Any bigger and you would not have fit completely.”

“Well, there is that.” He flushed at her implication, and bent down to kiss her neck and ear. “Tired? Or hungry?”

“Hungry only,” she told him. “Besides, how do we go about getting food now? I don’t suppose it will be spirited up by half-invisible servants in a few seconds. Oh heavens, Hael!” She buried her face in the soft, fine hair of his chest. “I’m going to fail at this!”

His chuckle vibrated through her. “I think you’ve managed very well as my wife so far.”

Her head came up to meet his gaze. “Not that. The…castle. The servants!”

“You didn’t have servants in your life?” He was genuinely surprised.

“Of course not!”

“But…” His eyes grew distant, his lips moving soundlessly.

She shook her head. “Don’t bother doing the math. I can. And I understand. All the others. The girls before me. They would have had hired help. Likely lots of it. It’s not much of a practice anymore.”

“You mean…this—since you’ve been here—all the serving staff…that is new to you?” He seemed ever more shocked.

“Yes. It would be to most all the women who would have come now.”

He finally pulled away from her to sit up, wrapping his forearms around his knees. It was such a human gesture from a man she’d been used to seeing in a different shape that it struck her as strange for a moment. Then she shook herself and sat up next to him, slowly rubbing a hand up and down the contours of his back, reveling in the easiness of their touches.

“Whatever it be, I’m glad I’m married to you. More than glad. Ecstatic.”

He inhaled. “No thoughts of your past marriage?”

“Ha!” She gave a small gasp. “I hadn’t even thought of it ‘til now, when you say so. No! Not an inkling. My mind has been filled with you, and I should think it will be always. You’re far superior. In all the ways.” She propped her chin on his shoulder, finding his line of vision through the tall windows.

“What is it truly like out there?” he said softly, staring out at the sunset. “I wonder…”

“Will we return to where I am from? Or stay here?” she asked, her voice flatter than she’d planned. It was a question she had not fully formed until this minute, and yet so much weighed on it.

He shifted slightly. “I am not entirely sure. Is there magick where you are from?”

“No…or if it is, it is deep underground. Hidden and so very secret. There are stories of you, though. Or at least, stories like this.”

He jerked a little. “People know of me?”

“Of what you were. Creatures like you were, as the Beast. All the lands have the tales, in various forms, from East to West. They are slightly different, depending on the country, but there is always a tale of an animal groom or bride.”

“So there is magick.”

She shook her head. “No. I…don’t think so. Just very old stories—some go back centuries and eons. But real magick…if it ever existed in my place…it is gone now.”

“Then how did you cross to here?”

“I haven’t been able to figure it. Perhaps it is a…parallel existence? A lost place in time? A…door?”

“Do you want to go back?” The pain lacing his voice was like a knife to her gut, and she gripped his waist.

“No! I will lose you! I will stay here happily if it means we are together!” she said vehemently. “It will kill me if you cast me aside…I would die if I lived without you now. That decision was made the minute I turned from the woods today.”

The tension quivered and then eased out of his body, and he sighed heavily. His head dropped heavily. “Thank the stars.”

His voice was thick, and she didn’t dare press for devotion again. But as the silence stretched, she felt the need to speak.

“I suppose I’m only trying to discover what I’m in for, now. If we leave the castle will everyone else be dressed like we do here? Will it feel like the…sixteenth century? Am I a bridge, pulling you and your castle away from this time and space?”

He sighed. “I have no idea, my love.” He took her hand in his, spinning the diamonds and gold around her heart finger, watching the light play against their matching rings. “I’m relieved I don’t have to manage it without you.”


	15. Chapter 15

They watched the sun set further until his stomach gurgled. He shot her a rueful glance. “I haven’t eaten much lately.”

“Oh?” She cast about for clothes that weren’t torn or stained, assuming they must go out or call for food. “Why not?”

“You have to ask?”

“Your wounds? Still bothering you?”

He captured her wrist as she moved across the bed, holding her so she had to look back at him. “I ached for love of you. Love I was forbidden to speak aloud—but the effects of lovesickness were there all the same. Gods, Eilwen. How I’ve pined for you! And now…to think we’ve married. And I’m in a different form once again, all is well, all is finished…and we are finally…you are…”

And there it was, suddenly, the grief, the shock, the joy, the desperation and the love all tangled together in the thickness of his voice, and then the wetness beading his eyelashes. She turned to him at once, heedless of their nudity, kneeling between his legs so she could press his forehead to her collarbone. His arms looped around her hips as he buried his face between her breasts and gave himself over to great shuddering half-sobs that sounded like gasps and sighs. 

It was all too much to imagine, too complicated for her mind to make up. This great man, who had been through some unspoken hell, who had waited hundreds of years for this moment, and now lived it, was hers. And he was offering his sorrow to her, stripping his emotions bare. Now it was she who felt tears pressing, if only to realize all her own sadness was washed away with his. 

When he finally pulled his head up, her skin was streaked with his tears. 

“Hael.” She bent and kissed his cheeks and then his lips, tasting the salt and water. “There may be many days you give yourself over to this, but know I will catch you up every time. It is overwhelming for me; I cannot imagine how it be for you.”

He bowed his head to her breast again at her words and inhaled carefully, though his breathing was shallow and tight against more weeping. “You have no notion how much I love you.”

“I expect many decades of you showing me,” she said lightly. “And I don’t think I’ve begun to uncover how much I love and adore you. The depth of it is nearly frightening. Now. Did you still want something to eat?”

“Practicality and logic again, wife?” he said, but his tone was laced with something more. He pulled her against him, so her breasts bounced against his chest and she fell down above his body. “I’m not quite so hungry. Perhaps after this.”

She felt his length below her grow, and she shifted her hips so she could press her damp center against him and grind, heat on heat. 

“You can take me again?” she asked, delighted.

“Ought I to ask you that?”

“If I was virgin, maybe.” Shifting, she placed her hand on him and then curled back so she could take him into her mouth. He let out a gust of air as she tasted his early seed, and licked the thickness of him. When she breathed in his scent, mixed now with hers, she felt hunger for him well up inside, insatiable. As she pressed her lips to every engorged inch of him, she pressed her core to his wide thigh, marking him. He returned her push with his leg, and threw back his head, straining towards her, his hands gripping the pillows as she took her fill of his shape.

As she felt him harden further, she stopped and settled herself above him. His eyes opened, and his hands came to her hips. 

“There is a view I will never tire of seeing,” he said, the last word a groan as she impaled herself on his shaft. “You feel…entering you is beyond…” He lost his words as she began to move. 

Leaning over him, so her nipples brushed the hair of his chest, she rode him, rotating her pelvis so she could find her pleasure, drawing it out of both of them. 

“You fit me,” she breathed into his ear. “You are massive and perfect, and I will always want you inside me, to take me, to push me to release.” She slid up and down, finding their rhythm. 

“When you fill me with your seed, I am undone every time.”

He bucked his hips against hers at that, and crushed her close. “You have a way with only your notions!”

“I’m only…saying what I am thinking,” she gasped in between his thrusts and hers. Suddenly she felt herself rise, the crest of the wave reaching up to grab her. “Hael! I cannot—!” It was too late; she had no choice but to let go of herself, to ride the release, to feel the second roll over her. Quivering, she felt the edge of a third, and pushed against his great body to find it, and as she took it, she opened her eyes.

He was looking at her with such utter, deep, desire and joy, cloudy with lust, that she could not hold on as yet another wave took her. As she broke, he grabbed her, and finally let himself go, filling her with a hoarse roar. 

She fell onto him when they were both sated, silent, except for the calmness of their breathing as it evened and paced. The warmth of him enveloped her, and his fingers drew lazy circles on her back and thighs. The immediate comfortableness astounded her. There was no awkward fumbling, no slow attempt to learn one another. It was as if they had always been joined, always been one. Was it magick? True love? Simply finding the match of one’s life?

Hael gave a contented sigh, then she could hear him grin. Propping her chin on his chest, she looked up at him. “What is it?”

“I was thinking…I hope I’ve gotten you with child, as I cannot wait to see you pregnant, cannot wait to meet our children as they come. But then, I realized I do not want to rush such a thing, that I want this time with you, quiet and simply. I want both things at the same time, and both are perfection.”

She smiled. “That is likely a happy realization.”

“It is.” He hugged her close. “Now…I’m not hungry. I’m famished. Let’s nip to the kitchens and see if we can beg some tea and cakes.”


	16. Chapter 16

She ended up wearing one of his dressing gowns, drowning in the satin of it, and they tiptoed barefoot down the back stairwell, holding hands and trying not to make noise. The mischievousness reminded her of his ways as the Beast, and seeing such moments in him gave her deep relief.

“You know, had we a proper wedding, we would have wedding cake yet,” she whispered. 

His hand tightened on hers. “You don’t regret our speed, though?”

“No, never. I’d do it all over again exactly the same. But…a bit of cake with frosting right now would do the trick.”

“There’s likely something sweet. We had such with our tea all week, didn’t we? There’ll be cake.”

They pushed open a thick wood door and entered the stone hallway toward the bottom of the castle, but not the bowels, so light still came in through tall narrow windows on one end. The sunset still offered some late gold light. It was not a quiet castle anymore, though. Down different hallways were voices, laughter, muffled shrieks of joy, a burst of song. They hurried, unwilling to be caught, and ended at the kitchen door.

“If Mrs. Grey isn’t cross, we are in luck,” Hael said. “I admit to have been a picky eater while like the Beast.”

“Oh dear!” she whispered.

He squeezed her fingers and pulled her through. As they slipped into the kitchens, the heat of three huge hearths, newly banked, hit them and they stopped short. She suddenly felt extremely naked and stupid.

Three dozen of the household staff, both men and women, froze at their entrance. There was a small feast on the long table in the middle of the room, and the center sagged with fruits and cakes and ices. Plates were heaped with game and bird, salads and puddings.

One of the women rose from the far end. She was shockingly tall and surprisingly thin, with a queenly tilt to hear head. 

“Sire?” Her voice was low and warm. “Is everything alright? You didn’t wish to ring for a plate?” She gestured slightly to the rough system of pulleys, flags, and small tin bells. 

Hael shifted, releasing her hand, and she felt his discomfort and shock as keenly as if it were her own. 

This, she could do. 

Here was where her role as a wife could first be put to use.

“Mrs. Grey?”

The woman bent her head.

“How very lovely to meet you at last,” she said, reaching out. The woman gave her fingers without thinking, then looked as if she wanted them back. But Eilwen held on, suddenly sure of herself and her footing, finding her voice. “I have been hoping to meet the woman who managed all the meals all these many many months I have been here. It is always perfect and delicious. I sincerely cannot wait to hold banquets and see what you create.”

The fingers grew less rigid in her palm and she gave a slight squeeze and let go. 

“Well.” Mrs. Grey looked about at the staff. She nodded at them and they slowly went back to eating, but nearly silent. “I suppose it is a wedding day, and things are a little disheveled what with the…the…” she raised her hands slightly in bare reference to the lifted curse. “And I know the Master hasn’t been eating well.”

Hael cleared his throat. She felt his fingers at her waist. 

“I know this is quite unseemly,” she said, plucking at her husband’s robe. “But we were so very hungry, and I…it was my notion for cake, like where I am from…to enjoy cake as the bride and groom late at night, after we—that is, later, and…”

She saw several of the staff grin at her baldness, but not with malice. Some of the maids shot her outright giggly looks, but she couldn’t help but flush anyway.

Mrs. Grey stood still for a moment, and then her shoulders began to shake. “Oh my, Mistress! You will be keeping us well in laughter!” She wiped the corners of her eyes and shook her head, then leaned in slightly. “And I won’t be upset with what you’re saying, as I look forward to petite ones in the kitchen again. It’s been far too long since the Master was little and would run in for a tart every day!”

As she turned away, Hael sputtered. “I didn’t always run in for a tart!”

“True, true, sometimes it was for a croissant.” She flicked her fingers at them. “We’ll get you a plate in a moment.”

They stood, equally awkward, his hand ever tighter on her waist. She squeezed his fingers there, in reassurance and solidarity, as Mrs. Grey found them an overlarge silver platter filled with fruits, vegetables, cold meats, cheeses, and pates. 

“We’ll take it up and not bother you further,” Hael said gruffly.

“And we are very grateful,” she said at once, then winked at the staff. “Party on, as they say!”

The muted shout in the room was lost as they hurried up the back stair once more, the heaping plate balanced on her husband’s overlarge hand. 

“What did you say?!” he choked. “Party!?”

“It means… ‘to celebrate’. To have a good time,” she said, feeling silly. “I meant to lighten the mood.”

“I think you just gave them permission to do more than that,” he said, but he sounded pleased more than upset.


	17. Chapter 17

They ensconced themselves in his—their—room. The food sat between them on the soft bedding, and they ate while still wearing their dressing gowns. She was acutely aware of his nudity below the silk, and noticed his own eyes following her skin whenever it surfaced. 

He ate as if a starved man, marveling at the flavors—reminding himself of the tartness of a grape or the sweetness of a peach and sharing his joy with her, as if she too needed to re-taste each thing with him. It was so plain and so pure her heart ached. She could never lose him. She was quite sure she’d never recover. 

“Hael,” she said softly. “If my appearance here ruins your world…will you despise me?”

He looked utterly horrified, freezing, a scone half-way to his mouth. “No! You have saved me! Us! Everything! If we must move ahead, we will! If the world has shifted below the castle, so be it. It is not your fault – it is mine, for taking so long to find the love of my life.”

He reached across and caressed her cheek and chin, then leaned in to kiss her, as if sealing his words into truth. 

“I just don’t want to find out we must be parted,” she said, finally voicing her deepest fears. “I don’t want the magick to rip us away from one another. That I’ll wake to discover this has all been a dream, or I disappear in sleep and learn I am back in my cold lonely house.”

Hael shook his head. “No. That will not happen.”

“How can you be so sure?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, but I am. What of…the stories? From your world and time. Did the magick ever separate the lovers after they had found one another?”

She thought back. “Sometimes…usually by trickery or some foolish choice by one of them to disobey. But if they follow the rules and stay true to one another…then…no. I think the stories…every story…eventually they stay together forever. The snakes, the bears, the pigs, the frogs, the birds…unless one is a fool, they are happy together always.”

“There, then.” He sat back, satisfied. “We won’t be. As you said, I would die if I lost you now, anyway. If I woke and discovered you gone, my heart would stop.”

She stared at him, amazed he voiced her exact sentiments. He offered her half of a kiwifruit, and she took it absently, gazing at him with joy.

When he noticed her raptured look, he paused eating again and smiled slightly. “Are we offering our thoughts and questions now?”

“What are you wondering?” she asked at once, eager to hear more of his mind. Everything was still whirling in some ways, but questions were good. They seemed to constantly clear the air a bit more.

“I…I have wondered…how it is you came here, if you can tell me more of what your life was before?” He spoke quietly, and at his hands. “Your accent is unusual and different from any I’ve heard before. Your culture is not like ours here at all – I don’t sense anything similar in our sensibilities. Is my land so very different now?”

“No,” she smiled at him. “Your land is still very much the same – in some places it is as if…well, and perhaps it has…it is like time has stopped for centuries. You would recognize the towns, the buildings. The language is still alive, though little used.”

“How is it you speak it, then?” he asked.

“It is part of my work, to know your dialect.”

“You were here in my country to learn, then? To do your…work?”

“Yes. And no.” She settled back, stretching her legs along the satin of the bedding. Her womb still pulsed, full and sated. His eyes traveled the lines of her body, from head to toe, but then met her gaze again as he reached for more grapes.

“It is both? How? Work and leisure?”

“Yes. I…I have told you I was successful. Ambitious. I was…am…a scholar of archaic beginnings of certain religions. The only woman in my field, and highly published. Widely sought. It was a job that had brought me to the Languedoc, to read over some very old manuscripts and translate them from Occitan to modern French, and then to English. Which I did…and I was about to return back to my land. I did not relish the return, the loneliness. So I took a little…vacation. It is what we call a rest from work. Goodness knows I sorely needed it. I went into the mountains, to Cévennes, to see the megaliths, to see if I could find elders who would speak of their family’s ties to Huguenots—.”

“This sounds like work yet, to me,” he interrupted. “And how is it we have not spoken of this so much? You have come alive, your eyes are so bright!”

She flushed. “I am…well versed in the topic. It tends to put people…off…when I speak to my knowledge.”

“I am hungry for it,” he said earnestly. “Teach me what you know.”

“Well,” she grew warmer. “We will teach one another many things over the decades we are wed.”

“True.” He pushed away the platter and reached for her, folding her into his frame so they spooned and could watch dusk settle over the land outside the window. His warmth was a blanket, his arm heavy on her stomach. “Tell me the rest, then, Eilwen.”

“I found a small home, at the top of one of the mountains, overlooking a valley. There were huge megaliths everywhere. And the old woman and her husband brought me tea, and spoke only in Oc. It…washed over me. They told me which footpath to take, but as I walked it was as if I could still hear them speaking to me. I thought the sound was carrying into the valley. But it was…as if I was drowning in words, walking those soft paths, trodden for thousands of years. I thought I was tipping sideways, unable to walk straight. But I needed to, or I’d fall off the side of the mountain. And then…maybe I did fall. Or I reached the clearing of the first megalith. It all…spun. And when I stood up, I was in your rose garden, and the megalith had turned into the statue that stands there now. And I met you.”

“I was not very welcoming,” Hael said softly. “You shocked me. I had no idea where you had come from. You were…so unlike the others. You wore trousers.”

“I thought I was dreaming,” she told him. “It’s likely why I didn’t take to your appearance with too much surprise.”

“But I was not a dream.” He squeezed her, sending warmth through her insides. “And this is not, either.”

He kissed her neck, his beard soft and wiry. She wiggled closer, and was granted a soft groan from him. Between them, she felt him slowly harden and she pressed into his body.

“How is it,” he murmured into her skin. “That I am so very certain I will never tire of you? Of our life together?”

“Maybe it is still the magick,” she said, turning in his embrace and finding his eyes. She ran her fingers along his cheekbones and into his beard. 

“I highly doubt it at this point.” He kissed her. Once, twice. “I think it is simply…love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Without realizing it, this particular folk tale has always drawn me in. I've read several reiterations of Beauty and the Beast, from the originals to Robin McKinley's lovely (and multiple) re-tellings, as well as the more recent compilation of cultural similarities in folk tales by scholar Maria Tatar into one fantastic, multi-country book, and even the more interesting takes on the tale, from The Beauty of the Wolf by Wray Delaney and Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge by Lisa Jensen. (go find these books!)
> 
> I have picked up pieces from all of this literature, which I've echoed in small, tiny places in this re-telling of the same tale, which I felt added to the mystique of the idea of a parallel existence and literature.
> 
> I've also set this in the Languedoc, or the land of Oc, or where they speak Occitan, since it's real but obscure, and there are many a wives tale (in yet other books) about how certain parts of the valleys...time literally stops. Your car clock will stop as you drive in. Your watches will stop. So...while it's not time travel per sae, it's a bit of messing with time and place and existence in this tale intermingling with real locations where time has a funny history of being just a tiny bit magical. And so much of Beauty and the Beast renditions mention the stopping of time, I thought...why not? 
> 
> Meshed also with Welsh names, this story has simply been me, having fun with different pieces of the world, but using the structure of a familiar--and culturally uniting--story.


End file.
